Pity is the worst insult. Mitt Romney: “I’m not going to worry too much about what Rick [Santorum] is saying these days. I know that when you fall further and further behind, you get a little more animated.”

The worst part of Santorum is the self-delusion: “Santorum and his team wouldn’t be so angry if they didn’t think there was still a real possibility they could prevail. By contrast, look at Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, who seem to be enjoying playing out the string with no sense of urgency about the losses they’re piling up. ‘I’m cheerful about going forward,’ Gingrich said on Friday — speaking like a man who’d come thoroughly to terms with being out of contention. Santorum, on the other hand, is genuinely frustrated that his sense of possibility is not more widely shared.” Or maybe the chip on the shoulder: “Those expecting Santorum to listen to reason and fall in line don’t understand who, and what, they are dealing with.”

The worst part, of course, for Democrats is that it directly contradicts the White House push to raise taxes on upper-income taxpayers, which includes many small businesses. “Senate Democrats on Monday introduced a $25 billion tax cut to spur hiring among small businesses that is intended to counter a different offer by House Republicans. The two-pronged proposal will give small businesses a 10 percent tax cut in exchange for hiring new workers or raising employee pay, and will allow businesses to fully deduct the cost of significant investments made this year.”

Or maybe the worst part is the refusal to ever apologize. “In an interview that will air on CNN later today, Rick Santorum defended his now famous exchange with New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny, in which he accused Zeleny of lying and distorting his comments.”

The worst part of Peter Beinart’s anti-Israel screed is that it destroys whatever reputation the author had for competent journalism. Bret Stephens demolishes him. “Beinart’s habit of what is either inexplicable sloppiness or extreme interpretative elasticity turns out to be one of the defining characteristics of The Crisis of Zionism. In fact, one of the challenges of reviewing the book is that it practically demands a typology.. . . Still, the deeper problem isn’t that there’s so much in Beinart’s book that is untrue, but rather so much that is half-true: the accurate quote used in a misleading way; the treatment of highly partisan sources as objective and unobjectionable; the settlement of ferocious debates among historians in a single, dismissive sentence; the one-sided giving—and withholding—of the benefit of the doubt; the ‘to be sure’ and ‘of course’ clauses that do more to erase balance than introduce it. It’s a cheap kind of slipperiness that’s hard to detect but leaves its stain on nearly every page.” Read the whole thing — the review, that is.

I imagine he’s the worst possible pick from Romney’s perspective. “Amid a growing sense of inevitability that Mitt Romney will become the Republican nominee for president, Rick Santorum said Monday he would consider being the former Massachusetts governor’s number two.” What, Santorum would help lock up that hard to win state of Alabama?

The worst would be to lose in your home state. “A staunch conservative from a moderate state, Rick Santorum is unlikely to get much home comfort in Pennsylvania as he tries to stay near the front of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Early opinion polls show Santorum leading main rival Mitt Romney ahead of the April 24 primary in Pennsylvania, a state he represented in Congress for 16 years before being resoundingly voted out of the Senate in 2006. But Santorum faces a tough fight to hold his lead in a state where he must win — and win well — to keep his presidential ambitions afloat.”

Worst scenario for Poland could be a second Obama term. “The headline in the largest Polish tabloid, Fakt: ‘Were they trading Poland? Puzzling Obama talk with Medvedev about the missile shield.’” Well, he did pull the rug out from under the Poles once.

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